Chapter Eleven: She’ll Never Let Me In
328 Words
Kael
She won’t even look at me now.
After Lior called me “dad,” after the way she clutched him and turned her back on me — it was clear.
Lyra would rather die than let me close again.
But I can’t walk away now. I won’t.
“Let me talk to you,” I said gently, standing a few paces behind her as she tucked Lior into bed later that evening. I shouldn’t have followed her to the healer’s hut where she lived, but I needed answers. I needed… her.
She turned slowly, her expression unreadable.
“What could you possibly say that would make any of this okay?” Her voice was calm — too calm.
“I didn’t know,” I said, my jaw clenched. “If I had—”
“If you had known, what?” she snapped, stepping closer now. “You’d have claimed us? Married me? Turned me into the Luna you rejected?”
I flinched.
“I was nineteen, Kael. You didn’t just reject me, you humiliated me. You told the entire pack I was unworthy. That I was nothing.”
My throat tightened.
“I had no choice—”
“You always had a choice!” she hissed. “You just didn’t choose me.”
I reached for her hand, but she pulled back like my touch was acid.
“I had to raise him alone. I had to fight through every shift, every tantrum, every fever, every question he asked about the father I couldn’t give him.”
“Lyra—”
“Don’t say my name like you still have the right.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
And that was the first time I saw her tears fall — not silently, not like before, but like something inside her finally broke.
I stood there, helpless.
The alpha of the strongest pack on this continent… powerless before the woman I once cast aside.
- Writer
